Madhya Pradesh Assembly bypoll result: Congress retains Chitrakoot seat as Nilanshu Chaturvedi trounces BJP by 14,133 votes

Congress candidate Nilanshu Chaturvedi was on Sunday declared elected to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly from Chitrakoot constituency, defeating BJP by 14,133 votes. Chaturvedi led right from the start of the vote count at 8 am and kept increasing his winning lead, officials said. After 19 rounds of counting, he defeated BJP’s Shankar Dayal Tripathi.

The election was called after the death of Chitrakoot’s Congress legislator Prem Singh. A total of 12 candidates were in the fray including nine independents. The counting of votes polled in the 9 November by-election began at around 8 am amid tight security in Satna district, around 400 kilometres from Bhopal. Chitrakoot has been known as mostly a Congress bastion. Prem Singh had won the Assembly constituency, bordering Uttar Pradesh, in 1the 998, 2003 and 2013 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. However, he had lost the seat to BJP’s Surendra Singh Gaharwar in the 2008 polls. With inputs from agencies